Then there’s mega projects like LHC and ITER (international projects, but it’s not pure chance that they’re located in Europe) and Wendelstein 7-X.
My pet example is Nordic Semiconductor, which has an insanely good position in the Bluetooth LE device market. What’s also interesting is that two of the major competitors also design their chips in Norway. Although those companies do illustrate one problem in Norway (and perhaps Europe in general): the lack of capital at certain stages. In the IC businesses it seems most companies are acquired by US companies eventually.
Let’s look at EVs. Europe doesn’t have Tesla. But seems like most European car makers are doing OK with EVs. Arguably better than US incumbent car makers. VWs new platform is one of the most promising right now, although this project has shown that VW has a problem with software engineering. But so does most other older car companies in the world. There are also some interesting start ups that’s more focused on designing/supplying components, such as Rimac and Kreisel. Rimac seems to go toe-to-toe with Tesla on extreme performance.
I believe a lot of robots used in advanced manufacturing is German as well?
In general I have the impression that Europe is very strong in designing/making components and manufacturing machines and such. Things that the end consumer never hears about. Very few have heard about ASML, but everyone has heard about Intel. So maybe that contributes to the impression that EU is behind on tech.
Europe has also been ahead of the US in adopting tech on the consumer side in several areas. The US was in the stone age for a long time when it came to banking and payment for instance.
How do you measure being behind/ahead in tech?